This weekend was amazing. After my BK night on friday I decided to venture out for Saturday. I had heard that there was some prayer meeting for the city of Santiago so I droppped by the church to see if anyone would be there to give me directions. Well, it turned out that two of the organizers were there and I helped them prepare and set up. the meeting was on a hill, more like a mountain that overlooked all of Santiago. Since O got there early with the organizers I was able to meet some people before the whole of it started. I met one girl in particular who spoke perfect English. As we were talking I asked her what she wanted to do after she graduated and she asked me if i had ever heard of Campus Crusade for Christ. Ummm... Yeah! She wants to go on staff with them once she is done so we got to talking about ministry and all the amazing stuff going on right now inthe world. People slowly trickled in and by the time worship started, about 150 people had arrived and the sun had set. We sang worship songs at the top of our lungs as we looked over the city. There were about 8 churches represented there that night. Catholic, Evangelical, Presbyterian, so many names all under the name of Christ. We prayed in groups of three or four for Chile and for the Holy Spirit to use us in this beautiful country. And as I listened to the prayers of the people around me I prayed that God would give me a heart for Santiago. For some reason, I feel like this is where I will end up. The night ended with some extremely fun worship songs (in Chile it is really popular to choreograph dances, so many of the songs had dances that basically all 150 people knew!). I got home by about midnight.
The next morning I went to church adn LOVED it! While the sermon was not anything like Brians sermons, there was still just pure wonderful Bible in it. And the whole chruch felt like such a family. of course it helped that it was all in English so I could really understand every word instead of the gist of every sentence in the sermon. That guy I wrote about earlier, Matt, played the guitar for worship, taught the kids lesson, and introduced the pastor. His parents were in town so after the service he introduced me to them. We, meaning the whole church, went out to lunch afterward. It was great! Not quite as hippy as I am used to with Trinity but it feels so much more like a home than the other churches I have been to. After most of the lunch party had left it was just the pastor and his wife, Matt and his parents and I. Yeah... Okay moving on.
Today, one the guys in my class who I know is a Christian had a headache so at lunch he wanted to go to the local drugstore for some aspirin. He asked me to go with him and as we walked we talked. I am really glad we talked. We got on the same page and in some wierd sense he is holding me accountable. THEN, just now as I was sitting down to use the computer I got in a conversationa bout religion with one of the other guys in my class who is self proclaimed Catholic but doesn{t really believe. As we were talking another girl in my class joined the conversation and pretty much straightfoward informed me that if someone believed that you have to believe a certain doctrine to go to heaven, she wants nothing to do with them. Not even if they have the best intentions, not even if they NEVER bring it up to her. Just the fact that they have that belief, she wants nothing to do with them. My heart sunk when I heard this. i was really hoping that we could be friends, but she has to know by now that I am a christian. Not that I have shoved anything down anyones throats, but Christ is such a big part of my life, that if you know me, you have to know that part of me. So am not sure where this is going to go from here, but at least the conversation has been started. And I am not alone. I have prayed for boldness to live what I believe and to live it in love and so here I go.
Please pray that I would truly love the people in my life, and that my love would be compassionate, but truthful.
The next morning I went to church adn LOVED it! While the sermon was not anything like Brians sermons, there was still just pure wonderful Bible in it. And the whole chruch felt like such a family. of course it helped that it was all in English so I could really understand every word instead of the gist of every sentence in the sermon. That guy I wrote about earlier, Matt, played the guitar for worship, taught the kids lesson, and introduced the pastor. His parents were in town so after the service he introduced me to them. We, meaning the whole church, went out to lunch afterward. It was great! Not quite as hippy as I am used to with Trinity but it feels so much more like a home than the other churches I have been to. After most of the lunch party had left it was just the pastor and his wife, Matt and his parents and I. Yeah... Okay moving on.
Today, one the guys in my class who I know is a Christian had a headache so at lunch he wanted to go to the local drugstore for some aspirin. He asked me to go with him and as we walked we talked. I am really glad we talked. We got on the same page and in some wierd sense he is holding me accountable. THEN, just now as I was sitting down to use the computer I got in a conversationa bout religion with one of the other guys in my class who is self proclaimed Catholic but doesn{t really believe. As we were talking another girl in my class joined the conversation and pretty much straightfoward informed me that if someone believed that you have to believe a certain doctrine to go to heaven, she wants nothing to do with them. Not even if they have the best intentions, not even if they NEVER bring it up to her. Just the fact that they have that belief, she wants nothing to do with them. My heart sunk when I heard this. i was really hoping that we could be friends, but she has to know by now that I am a christian. Not that I have shoved anything down anyones throats, but Christ is such a big part of my life, that if you know me, you have to know that part of me. So am not sure where this is going to go from here, but at least the conversation has been started. And I am not alone. I have prayed for boldness to live what I believe and to live it in love and so here I go.
Please pray that I would truly love the people in my life, and that my love would be compassionate, but truthful.
Comments
My own personal belief, which you may not accept, is that there are good and deeply spiritual and wonderful people all over the world and from all faiths. The Dalai Lama is a wonderful holy man. Mother Teresa was Catholic --many born-again Christians would say she is not "saved" because she was Catholic.
Even when I was a Christian, I didn't believe that God would condemn to hell all the religious Jews who died in the Holocaust simply because they didn't believe in Jesus. I argued with people at Jews for Jesus (including your dad) that God judged people's hearts, not their words and not their beliefs.
That didn't make me popular with JFJ.
At this point, I question the existence of God, but I would still call myself spiritual and ethical.
Perhaps you could tell your classmate that you and your mother (who is a scientist and not religious and does not hold to a particular doctrine) have agreed to respect each other's separate beliefs and not make assumptions about where each will spend eternity?
This kind of approach doesn't prevent you from believing and being a lover of your God and faith. And it might make it even easier for non-believers to be drawn to your faith instead of repelled from it. After all, being drawn to a faith simply out of a fear of damnation is not very appealing. People should be drawn because it gives them meaning and hope and a sense of purpose in life.
I love you and respect you, and I'm very glad that you have faith. But I agree with the classmate that it would be a good thing if you didn't require others to agree with you in order for you to believe that they could be accepted by your God. None of us are God. And if there is a God, that being is certainly far wiser and more compassionate than we are. Otherwise, this being is not a god worth worshipping. Not in my opinion, anyway.
I respect your right to disagree with me!
But I hope you can see spirituality and individual people's relationships with their own God as a separate mystery that nobody but them and God knows. And this includes spiritual agnostics, like me.
Love,
Mom
your fave hippy
thanks for your nice note.
from your login, you must be a great supporter of becka, which makes me happy.
anything posted on a blog is open for the world to see and comment on, imho. so you weren't being nosy, just observant. (if i'd wanted this to be private i would have sent it by email)
Now, on to a separate topic:
as an educator, i am slightly mortified to find a serious grammatical error in my original posting...
the second-to-last sentence in that posting read:
"But I hope you can see spirituality and individual people's relationships with their own God as a separate mystery that nobody but them and God knows."
that should be corrected to replace "them" with "they" and "knows" with "know", as follows:
"But I hope you can see spirituality and individual people's relationships with their own God as a separate mystery that nobody but they and God know. "
There are probably more grammatical errors in that posting. e.g., technically, "spirituality and individual people's relationships" might be considered a plural, in which case "as a separate mystery" should be modified to "as separate mysteries" but i'm using artistic license to define "spirituality and individual people's relationships" as a singular object.
enough grammar, i'm a professor of science, not literature or grammar (so the standards for me are lower, right?)
have a great day
-kimmen